Who hasn’t thought about it?

Yes, but how hard is it for someone to disappear in the digital age? Author Evan Ratliff goes on the lam for WIRED Magazine with that question in mind. The article “Gone” reads like a techno-thriller,but ends with a poignant twist that touches the heart of story, and why we need one.

Turns out the biggest hazard is loneliness.

He writes:

Had I shown that a person, given enough resources and discipline, could vanish from one life and reinvent himself in another? . . . More than all that, I’d discovered how quickly the vision of total reinvention can dissolve into its lonely mundane reality. Whatever reason you might have for discarding your old self and the people who went with it, you’ll need more than a made-up backstory and a belt full of cash to replace them.

The story of what happens when you don’t have a story is worth reading.

Motion City Soundtrack released a video for “Disappear,” the first single of their forthcoming album My Dinosaur Life. Check it out after the jump. In addition to the video, the dates for MCS’ headlining tour with Set Your Goals, This Providence, and The Swellers can be seen as well.

Tour Dates:
01/23 :: Minneapolis, MN :: First Avenue
01/25 :: Grand Rapids, MI :: The Intersection
01/26 :: Cincinnati, OH :: Bogarts
01/27 :: Cleveland, OH :: House of Blues
01/29 :: Pontiac, MI :: Clutch Cargo’s
01/31 :: Pittsburgh, PA :: Mr. Small’s Theater
02/01 :: Townson, MD :: Recher Theater
02/03 :: New York, NY :: The Fillmore @ Irving Plaza
02/04 :: Hartford, CT :: Webster Theater
02/05 :: Allentown, PA :: Crocodile Rock Cafe
02/06 :: Charlotte, NC :: Amos’
02/08 :: Atlanta, GA :: Masquerade
02/10 :: Dallas, TX :: The Door
02/11 :: Austin, TX :: Emo’s

Wired writer Evan Ratliff spent 27 days in constant fear of getting caught as a small army of amateur and professional investigators hunted him. He had a bounty on his head and the Internet nipping at his heels.

Vanish, a combination of a manhunt and an experiment, began at 5:38 pm on August 14, 2009 as a bold headline on Wired proclaimed “Author Evan Ratliff Is on the Lam. Locate Him and Win $5,000.” We would discover if someone could disappear in today’s world, or whether the electronic trails from ATM, email, and cell phone usage would give him away.

Of course, in Evan’s case it wasn’t just a few concerned family members or police officers looking. It was any person on the Internet whose curiosity was aroused, either by the sheer challenge or by the bounty. Any and all traceable information would be shared over the next few weeks. Soon Evan’s phone records, credit card statements, IP dumps, interviews with friends, and anything that his hunters could dig up would be posted on Twitter, Facebook, and Wired’s own site.

The end goal for the hunters was to locate Evan, photograph him after giving the codeword “fluke,” and then submitting that photo along with a codeword Evan would provide to Wired. And after 27 long days, someone did just that. Evan was caught.

You can read the entire tale here. As you do, consider whether Evan made any genuine mistakes or whether his capture was simply inevitable. Is there a way to disappear, without giving up travel and technology? How would you do it? [Wired]

Send an email to Rosa Golijan, the author of this post, at rgolijan@gizmodo.com.

Featuring: Capture It (free font!)

Minneapolis pop band Motion City Soundtrack will release their fourth full-length album along with their debut major label album via Columbia on Jan 19th. My Dinosaur Life will see daylight Jan 19th and is produced by Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus which, by the way, was the producer from their 2005 breakout album Commit This To Memory.

Tracklisting:
1. Worker Bee
2. A Lifeless Ordinary (Need A Little Help)
3. Her Words Destroyed My Planet
4. Disappear
5. Delirium
6. History Lesson
7. Stand Too Close
8. Pulp Fiction
9. @!#?@!
10. Hysteria
11. Skin And Bones
12. The Weakends

pre order album

myspace

Watch Motion City Soundtrack’s video for “Disappear” right here.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=100754491

Motion City Soundtrack’s upcoming album My Dinosaur Life will be released January 19th on Columbia Records.

I ‘ve discovered a strange phenomenon at my home . It seems like a mini blackhole  whose  location cannot be pinpointed where small small items in the house keep on disappearing !  : ))  

I keep on buying spoons , forks , small knives and these small items keep on vanishing into thin air … with no trace of them whatsoever ..

sometimes i also find little bit of sugar or teapowder too disappearing .

making things disapper is part of magic…I forgot that, so either wordpress or my computer just made a long post, and an hour of my life just disappear. Well, I can’t re-write it down. This sucks. Which is realizing a situation for what it is. Got to know where you are before you can move on.

Let me see if I understand all this…

• If you cross the North Korean border illegally you get 12 years hard labor.

• If you cross the Iranian border illegally you are detained indefinitely.

• If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you get shot.

• If you cross the Saudi Arabian border illegally you will be jailed.

• If you cross the Chinese border illegally you may never be heard from again.

• If you cross the Venezuelan border illegally you will be branded a spy and your fate will be sealed.

• If you cross the Cuban border illegally you will be thrown into political prison to rot.

• If you cross the U.S. border illegally you get a job, a driver’s license, social security card, welfare, food stamps, credit cards, subsidized rent or a loan to buy a house, free education, free health care, a lobbyist in Washington and in many instances you can vote.

And Our President is running around the world telling how embarrassed he is, how arrogant we are and how we owe the world an apology for OUR bad behavior??????

Reports are coming in that the small village of ‘Karaagadzhlar’ in the Aghjabadi Rayon of Azerbaijan. Has become the first clustered human settlement to become invisible.

The area indicated in red is thought to be the village.

Experts are sceptical as to the truth of this claim, however Professor Ratfig Bial of the Eland Precept said in a statement today that the possibility of active camouflage was highly plausible:

A group of camouflage technologies which allowed an object to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of altering their appearance, color, luminance and reflective properties has been developed. However this is thought to have been stolen from a top-secret location at approximately 5 am on the morning of July 2nd 1982. The ingredients to achieve active camouflage are all there and they have the capacity to provide perfect concealment from visual detection.

It is thought that they are the perpetrators of the theft of the US army’s cloaking device which they had previously used as an advanced stealth technology that causes immediate invisibility.

An interpretation as to what technique may have been used to conceal the village.

Any attempt to try and find out whether these claims are true have been thwarted as all the surrounding towns and villages have been put on high security alert from their individual law enforcement authorities, which in Azerbaijan have total control over who or what goes out and in.

By now, not one Azerbaijani website mentions the village under this name, making it difficult for Police in the area to gain any ground in finding those responsible for this. A private investigation is underway.

DREAM EIGHT

I was in some sort of a nature park on the edge of a mountain with my grandmother.  The mountain was the kind you’d see in the Midwest.  The park had many trees, and I was at the start of a gravel trail that began a path downhill.  As I began to walk down the path, I noticed about ten feet ahead of me and all along the sides of the white gravel trail was the most strange illumination of of a rainbow.  It was as if you had taken a rainbow out of the sky and transposed its light on to the edges of the trail.  Now, there were many trees above, of which the leaves casted shadows onto the trail.  Every place where the sun should have been permitted to shine, a rainbow instead showed, but only along the white gravel path.  The rainbows were dynamic too, the colors kept osculating, and changing in a way that could only be described as psychedelic. As I continued to walk down the path, I began to see more of these rainbows show on the in the distance.  The ones nearby faded–very similar to how one would see mirages on a road appear and vanish.

Eventually it occurred to me that I had my camera with me.  I remember thinking about how this must have been one of the strangest anomalies in nature that was sure to never repeat itself.  Furthermore, I was unsure how much longer this episode would occur.  I had to take a picture that captured the mood and aura of this supernatural occurrence.  It was my duty as a photographer to do so and share it with the world.  Unfortunately I had remembered that my battery was nearing dead, so I only had one shot–one chance to take a picture before the battery would surely die.  I began to get uneasy because this was one of those photography tasks that you would have to take several shots to get right.  So I turned on my camera, and I framed the path with the rainbows still moving and varying color all along the white gravel.  After I took the picture, I noticed my camera said the battery was full.  This was such a relief, because as I continued to walk further downhill along the path, I took an endless amount of shots trying to capture this phenomenon. None of the pictures were spectacular, but they did reveal the scene.  What I did notice was, that when I was looking through the viewfinder, the rainbows came out much more vivid that in the captured photograph.  This made sense–I’d need a longer exposure to get a brighter rainbow, plus I couldn’t capture the best part, which was motion they made.

So, I decided to film a video of the scene, and switched over my camera’s shooting function.  I began to film the trail.  I panned way down towards the end of the trail, and noticed a family of two parents, and a young girl were now in the shot–but they were so far away they were only a few pixels of the image.  As I walked closer to them I took videos of only the nearby trail to capture the details of these strange dynamic psychedelic rainbows that seemed to take the place of sunlight on the trail.  Eventually I came up right next to this family, and found them to be very much in the same awe as me with this strange occurrence.  I passed them up and was now at the end of the trail way down in the valley of the mountain.

The trail transitioned into a building that went as a tunnel through a portion of forest that was densely covered with vines.  One side of the building was open, and you could see a wall that was covered with these vines.  In fact now that I think of it–it was exactly like the old business building at USF.  As I began to walk into this place, the rainbows remained, but they gained a new composure.  They were still only appearing between the shadows where the sunlight would have appeared, but now they were illuminated silhouettes of palm trees, each tree in a different color.  As the trees overlapped, the colors made gradients much like a regular rainbow would.  At this I stopped the video I was filming, because I found four of the rainbow-light trees together in what would make an awesome photo. So I walked up to frame a shot.  It was tricky… I remember thinking that I could have used a tripod, since a very slow frame rate was required.  I figured I’d just use a faster shutter-speed, and adjust in Photoshop so I could still get a sharp image.  As I tried to frame the shot I got in the way of the sun that shined from the open wall to my left.  As I did this, I casted a shadow, and that portion of the palm tree-rainbow thing went away just as regular sunlight would have.  Eventually I was able to take the picture, and with that I awoke.




Dream Symbols*

APPEAR

To dream that things appear out of no where, suggests that you need to utilize your intellect in a more creative and productive way. You need to think clearly and logically. Consider the symbolism of the objects that appear in your dreams for better understanding of your mind and its intellectual power.

BATTERY

To see a battery in your dream, symbolizes life energy. If the battery is dead, then it suggests that you are emotionally exhausted or feeling low.

BUILDING

To see a building in your dream, represents the self and the body. How high you are in the building indicates a rising level of understanding or awareness. If you are in the lower levels of the building, then it refers to more primal attitudes and/or sexuality. If you are scaling or climbing a building in your dream, then it indicates that you are getting carried away by your ambitions.

To see a building in ruins or damaged, indicates that your approach toward a situation or relationship is all wrong. You need to change. Your own self-image may have suffered and taken some blow.

To dream that a building collapses, indicates that you are losing sight of your ambitions and goals. Your pursuit for material gains is failing.

To dream that you or someone fall off a building, suggests that you are descending into the realm of unconscious. You are learning about and acknowledging aspects of your unconscious. Alternatively, it symbolizes your fear of not being able to complete or succeeding in a task. See also Falling in our Common Dream Themes section

CAMERA

To see a camera in your dream, signifies your desires to cling on and/or live in the past. Alternatively, it may indicate that you need to focus on a particular situation. Perhaps you need to get a clearer picture or idea.

To dream that the camera is broken, indicates that you are ignoring an issue or refusing to see the big picture.

CHILDREN

To see children in your dream, signify an aspect of yourself and your childlike qualities. You may be retreating back to a childlike state where you are longing for the past and the chance to satisfy repressed desires and unfulfilled hopes. Perhaps there is something that you need to see grow and nurtured. Take some time off and cater to the inner child within. Alternatively, the dream may be highlighting you innocence, purity, simplicity, and carefree attitude.

The loss of a child, signifies fallen hopes or a project.

To save a child, signifies your attempts to save a part of yourself from being destroyed. If you dream that you are separated from your children, then it symbolizes failure in some personal endeavor or a setback in some ideal you had.

COLORS

Colors in dreams represent energy, emotions, and vibes. First consider what that single color in your dream means to you and your own personal associations and relationship with that color.

DISAPPEAR

To dream that people or objects are disappearing right before your eyes, signifies your anxiety and insecurities over the notion that loved ones might disappear out of your life. You may feel that you cannot depend on someone and feel that you are alone and inadequate. You need to work on your self-image and self-esteem.

Alternatively, to dream that someone is disappearing suggests that you may not have given sufficient attention to those aspects/qualities of that person within your own self. Have you lost touch with some aspect of yourself? If your lover is disappearing, then it suggests that your love or interest for them is fading.

DOWN

To dream that you are moving down, suggests that you have made a wrong decision or headed toward the wrong direction in life. “Going down” may also sexual connotation and be a metaphor for oral sex.

FANTASY

To dream of a fantasy world, may be a way for your mind to highlight what is normal. Alternatively, the dream may be telling you to expand your thinking and use your imagination and creativity. Explore all your options no matter how strange or illogical it may be.

FOREST

To dream that you are in or walking through the forest, signifies a transitional phase. Follow your instincts. Alternatively, it indicates that you want to escape to a simpler way of life. You are feeling weighed down by the demands of your life.

To dream that you are lost in a forest, signifies that you are searching through your unconscious for a better understanding of yourself.

Please see also Woods.

GIRLS

To see a girl in your dream, represents your playful, innocent, and childlike nature. Perhaps you are behaving immaturely in some situation. Alternatively, a girl represents the feminine qualities of your character.

To dream about a girl that you just met, represents your anxieties and thoughts of whether you had made a good impression on her and what she thought of you. If she told you that she disliked you in the dream, then it may be an excuse for you to dismiss her and not pursue a relationship that is beyond friendship.

GRANDMOTHER

To see your grandmother in your dream, represents nurturance, protection, and unconditional love. Consider the qualities and characteristics that exist in your own grandmother.

GRAVEL

To see gravel in your dream, signifies practicality.

GREEN

Green signifies a positive change, good health, growth, fertility, healing, hope, vigor, vitality, peace, and serenity. Green is also symbolic of your strive to gain recognition and establish your independence. Money, wealth and jealousy are often associated with this color.

Dark green indicates materialism, cheating, deceit, and/or difficulties with sharing. You need to balance between your masculine and feminine attributes

ILLUMINATION

To see a strange illumination in your dream, foretells experience of distress, failure and trouble.

To see an illuminated face, signifies unfinished business that must be tended to immediately.

LIGHT

To see light in your dream, represents illumination, clear mind, guidance, plain understanding, and insight. Light is being shed on a once cloudy situation or problem. You have found the truth to a situation or an answer to a problem. Also consider the color of the light for additional significance.

To see a bright light in your dream, indicates that you need to move toward a higher level of awareness and feeling. Bright light dreams are sometimes common for those who are near death.

To see soft or shadowy lighting in your dreams, indicates feelings and thoughts from the primal aspects and less developed parts of your unconscious.
-
To dream that you cannot turn on the light, indicates a lack of insight and perspective on a situation.

LEDGE

To dream that you are standing on a ledge, indicates that you are feeling tense, anxious and/or excited. Consider what direction you are looking? Up? Down? Straight Ahead? The direction to which you are looking relates to your viewpoint, whether it be an optimistic one, pessimistic one or realistic one. On a more positive note, this dream may signify a sense of freedom and liberation.

To dream that someone is standing on a ledge, denotes a sign of desperation and a cry for help.

MOUNTAINS

To see mountains in your dream, signify many major obstacles and challenges that you have to overcome. If you are on top of the mountain, then it indicates that you have achieved and realized your goals. You have recognized your full potential. Alternatively, mountains denote a higher realm of consciousness, knowledge, and spiritual truth.

To dream that you are climbing a mountain, signifies your determination and ambition.

To dream that you fall off a mountain, suggests that you are in a hurry to succeed without thoroughly thinking about your path to success. Or that you are being forced upward toward a direction that you do not want to go or that you are not ready to proceed. Falling off a mountain, could also mean that you have a tendency to give up or escape from demanding situations.

MOVEMENT

To see normal movement in your dream, represents your ability to cope with various situations. You are able to adapt to the changing environments that you find yourself in.

To see quick, smooth movement, represents self-acceptance and/or your quick wit. You are able to easily express your feelings.

To see slow, difficult movement, indicates a fear of failure. Something is holding you back and preventing you to take chances.

NATURE

To dream of nature, denotes freedom, tranquility, restoration, and renewal. It may represent that your internal instincts are experienced and expressed.

PALM TREE

To see palm trees in your dream, represents tranquility, high aspirations, fame, victory, hopes, and longevity.

PARK

To dream that you are at a park, represents a temporary escape from reality. It indicates renewal, meditation, and spirituality. You are undergoing a readjustment period after experiencing some serious personal conflict or an ending to a passionate affair.

To dream that you are lost in a park, indicates your struggles with your career, relationship, or other problem. You may feel alienated by society.

To dream that you parked your car in a non-parking zone, suggests that you are poking your head in places where you do not belong. If you forgot where you parked, it indicates that you have lost your direction in life. You are going off track.

PATH

To walk through a quiet, open path, signifies clarity of thought and peace of mind. It may also symbolize your progress.

To see a blocked or windy path, denotes that you need to give serious attention to the direction you are heading in your personal and/or business life. You also need to take time out to consider and rethink the consequences before acting on your choices.

PHOTOGRAPHER

To dream that you are a photographer, represents your need to hold on to an image from a point in your life.

RAINBOW

To see a rainbow in your dream, represents hope, success and good fortune in the form of money, prestige, or fame. The rainbow is a bridge between your earthly, grounded self and the higher, spiritual self. Alternatively, the rainbow is a symbol for gay pride in the western culture.

For lovers to see a rainbow, symbolizes overwhelming happiness from their union.

RUSH

To dream that you are in a rush, suggests that you need to better manage your time. You feel that you do not have the time to do all the things you want to do. The dream is also representative of the pressure you are putting on yourself.

SHADOWS

To see you own shadow in your dream, signifies an aspect of yourself which you have not acknowledged or recognized. It may be a quality about yourself or a part of you that you are rejecting or want to keep hidden. These qualities may not necessary be negative, but can be creative ones.

To see a shadowy figure in your dream, represents aspects of this figure which you have not acknowledged or incorporated into your own personality. Alternatively, it symbolizes the young, the helpless or the under-developed.

SUNSHINE

To dream of sunshine, indicates that you are experiencing some sort of emotional or situational breakthrough. The dream is offering you reassurance and that you are headed on the right track.

TRAIL

To dream that you are on a trail, signifies your progress in life. Consider the difficulty and condition of the trail. The dream may also be a metaphor that you are “trailing behind” on some task or the race of life.

TREES

To see lush green trees in your dream, symbolize new hopes, growth, desires, knowledge, and life. It also implies strength, protection and stability. You are concentrating on your own self-development and individuation.


To dream that you are climbing a tree, signifies that you will achieve your career goals and reach those high places in society. The degree of difficulty to which you climb the tree will measure the speed of your achievement of these goals.

To dream that you cut down a tree, signifies that you are wasting your energy, time, and money on foolish pursuits. Alternatively, it may be a comment on your sexual nature.

To see a falling tree in your dream, indicates that you are off balance and out of sync. You are off track and headed in the wrong direction.

TUNNEL

To see a tunnel in your dream, represents the vagina, womb, and birth. Thus it may refer to a need for security and nurturance.

To dream that you are going through a tunnel, suggests that you are exploring aspects of your unconscious. You are opening yourself to a brand new awareness. Alternatively, it indicates your limited perspective as in the phrase tunnel vision. Are you being close minded or narrow minded in some issue?

To see the light at the end of a tunnel, symbolizes hope. You will be able to navigate through life and all its difficulties with great success. It may also indicate the end of your journey or goals.

VIDEO CAMERA

To dream that you are using a video camera, suggests that you need to be more objective in your decisions. Focus on the task at hand and try not to let your emotions cloud your judgment.

To dream that someone is using a video camera, indicates that you are reflecting back on your past and old memories. You may be trying to learn from previous mistakes or relive the good and bad times.

VINES

To see vines in your dream, represent your hopes, ambitious thoughts or ideas. Alternatively, it may also indicate your clinginess to others or that others are too clingy to you. Perhaps you feel trapped and are searching to break free. Your emotions could be holding you back.

To see grape vines in your dream, symbolizes rewards, prosperity, and spirituality. It also signifies sexuality and sensuality.

WALKING

To dream that you are walking with ease, signifies a slow, but steady progress toward your goals. You are moving through life in a confident manner. Consider your destination.

To dream that you have difficulties walking, indicates that you are reluctant and hesitant in proceeding forward in some situation. You may also be trying to distance yourself from certain life experiences.  The difficulty in walking is a reflection of your current situation and the obstacles that you are experiencing.

WHITE

White represents purity, perfection, peace, innocence, dignity, cleanliness, awareness, and new beginnings. You may be experiencing a reawakening or have a fresh outlook on life. However, in Eastern cultures, white is associated with death and mourning.

WOODS

To see the woods in your dream, represents life, fertility, rejuvenation, and spring. Alternatively, it symbolizes the unknown and unconscious. You may be discovering your instinctual nature.

To dream that you are walking through the woods, signifies your return to an aspect of yourself that is innocent and spiritual. If you are walking out of the woods, then the dream could be a literal depiction of being “out of the woods” or being in the clear.

To dream that you are lost in the woods, indicates that you are starting a new phase in your life. You are expressing some anxiety about leaving behind the familiar and what you know.

To see dried up, dying woods in your dream, suggests that there is a situation in your life that has not yet been resolved. You may also be overwhelmed with a problem or issue.

YOUNG

To see young people in your dream, symbolizes an end to your worries and a fresh outlook on your life. It may also represent the younger aspect of yourself. Perhaps you need to be more playful and carefree.

To dream that you are young again, indicates that you are behaving childish or immaturely. Alternatively, it represents your failed attempts to rectify past mistakes. You are dwelling on past regrets and lost opportunities.




* Explanations were taken from Dream Moods.

i’m trying to stay optimistic, but the latest offering from motion city soundtrack is fairly bland. it seems, gone are the days of when jesse johnsons’ thrilling moog riffs were the hallmark of the bands’ sound. but ever since 2003s ‘i am the movie’ the scene has been flooding with copy-cats. the artwork i find pretty disappointing too, it looks like something in between the cover of len’s* ‘you can’t stop the bum rush’ and fat freddy’s drop’s ‘dr boondigga and the big bw’. just plain lame.

its not all bad news in the mcs world though, they’ve been doing some pretty interesting stuff tour-wise lately. It was announced the band would be playing 3 nights in a row in chicago (from december 18 – 20), over the three shows the band will play each of their previous 3 albums in their entirety. man i wish i could go to the first two shows, ‘i am the movie’ and ‘commit this to memory’ still remain two of my favorite records. in the lead up to album 4, ‘my dinosaur life’, frontman justin pierre, has been playing impromptu acoustic shows around the states, allowing his fans to decide on the locations and suggest ideas via twitter. calling the feat ‘on the dino trail’, each of justin’s movements have been documented in a series of youtubisodes.

*the band that gave us that 1999 hit ’steal my sunshine’

listen:

motion city soundtrack – disappear

len – steal my sunshine (don’t pretend you don’t want it!!)

Incredible! Like real magic. Even when you know exactly what he’s doing, it still fools your eye.

For those of you who need to know

Sic is a Latin word meaning “thus”, “so”, “as such”, or “in such a manner”. In writing, it is placed within the quoted material, in square brackets–or outside it, in regular parentheses–and usually italicized – [sic] – to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error.^[1]

Some time ago – probably back in 2007 – I bought a book called ‘365 Ways to Change the World,’ by Michael Norton. I wanted to make a difference in the world in which I live – to give something back as it where. As a Christian there are many ways for me to do so, but I also wanted to make a difference in more mundane matters and ways also. Of course I know that Christians are able and currently do make a difference in a variety and plethora of ways. I was looking for something a little different to the norm I guess.

Anyhow, I came across this book and thought that this would be a great book to read one day at a time – as the book suggests one action/theme for each day of the year. This book would give me plenty of food for thought and there would have to be many things that I could do or participate in to make a difference.

Not long after I bought the book my world was turned upside down and became something totally different to what I had up till then been living. Totally is probably not the right word, as some things didn’t change – but it was certainly life-changing.

I chose to leave my job in an organisation for which I had worked for nearly twenty years, the last few of which I was a manager. My health was terrible, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome causing absolute havoc. I moved from the area in which I was living to a totally different location and under different circumstances, and that without a job. Life had changed tremendously for me and all of my belongings were locked away in a storage shed until I could sort my life out and start afresh.

I got another job which was completely different to the one I had before. My health seemed to improve dramatically and the dreaded illness which had plagued for two decades seemed to finally disappear. Then I had a terrible car accident which almost killed me and prolonged this transitory period of my life.

Now finally, I have recently been able to get all my belongings out of storage – including this book by Michael Norton. It is therefore now time to start again what I had originally planned to do and had begun back in 2007. I will read the section of the book marked out for each calendar day and consider what I shall do with the actions/themes for that day. It may be that there will be days that I will not take up the suggested action or activity, while on other days I may very well throw myself into the suggested action or activity. What I am hopeful of is finding at least one action or activity, though I am fairly sure there will be far more than one action or activity that I will participate in to some extent.

I will probably report my attempts or at least my resolutions to engage in actions and activities here, as a way of showing whether this book is useful for assisting people in making a difference. After all, its subtitle is ‘How to make a difference – one day at a time.’ As I set out on my journey with this book, I am quite excited by the prospect of making that difference and becoming more engaged with the world in which I live – in a positive manner.

I think the book is a brilliant idea and something that most people would find helpful – even if they do everything that is suggested in the book. It is certainly packed with ideas and suggestions.

There is also a web site to use along with the book:

http://www.365act.com

All of the ideas in the book are included in the web site and many more according to the book. There is also an ‘ideas bank’ on ways of changing the world for the better – which also seems to be a brilliant idea I think.

OK, I will now look at today’s idea.

My copy of the book (paperback) is by Penguin Books ( www.penguin.com.au ) and was printed in 2006.



The future of photography 

does not lie in the cheapness 

but in the quality of a picture. 

If a photograph is beautiful,

complete, and durable, it

acquires an intrinsic value

before which its price disappears

entirely. For my part, it is my

wish that photography, rather

than falling into domain of

industry or of commerce, might remain in that of art.

That is its only true place, and I shall always seek

to make it progress in that direction. 

Gustave Le Gray

(1820-1884)

French Photographer

See an interview with Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack plus him performing “Disappear” acoustically here.

As someone on the Magic Cafe said, your handling is really, really good. This effect looks amazing. Unfortunately, you patter is very boring and too descriptive of what you are doing.

Rate the following sentence in terms of entertainment value: “I’m going to make a rabbit appear in this hat. Look. The hat is empty. I turn the hat over. Look. There is a rabbit in the hat now.”

That is what you are doing with this effect. You are taking a miracle and stealing some wonder out of it. I don’t know your personality, or how it would work best for you. But this presentation is NOT it.

Rating: One Milk and one Light Bulb. Great handling, poor presentation.

(Ratings are completely arbitrary depending upon what genre of music I am into that day.)

By signing up for Motion City Soundtrack’s e-mail list here, you can download their new song “Disappear” for free. It’s the first studio-recorded song from the band in over two years, and you can stream it below. “Disappear” comes from the band’s upcoming full-length My Dinosaur Life, due out in 2010.

This song would be right at home on an album like Commit This To Memory, and it’s really building my anticipation for My Dinosaur Life.

Highway of Tears

They disappear from small towns and big cities, from native reserves in the north and affluent suburbs in the south. They drift away and they abruptly vanish. And they leave, in their wake, broken-hearted families, confounded investigators and gaping holes in the communities where they grew up, forged friendships, held jobs, raised children.

At this moment in Canada, there are 1,573 missing women on file with the Canadian Police Information Centre, a national case-tracking database maintained at the RCMP’s Ottawa headquarters.

The number sheds only a partial light on this dark story. It doesn’t include the lost or stolen girls under the age of 18 who may have lived to become missing women. It doesn’t account, anymore, for those who were once missing but have since been proven dead.

It doesn’t embrace women who are gone but not reported missing.

Yet great depths of misery and mystery underlie even this imperfect figure. The stories of Canada’s lost women — enough to equal the population of a small town, or the entire staff of a large urban hospital — would fill many mournful volumes.

The stories include some particularly shocking narratives in which a multitude of the missing disappear from a single area — such as B.C.’s “Highway of Tears,” a lonely stretch of road between Prince Rupert and Prince George where five of those women were last seen and 13 others are known to have been murdered.

A high-profile search in late August for the remains of Nicole Hoar — one of Hwy. 16’s 18 unsolved cases — sparked extensive news coverage and prompted some nationwide soul-searching, at least briefly, about Canada’s missing women.

Then, within days, came an overdue pledge by Manitoba RCMP and Winnipeg city police to more closely collaborate in probing a series of disappearances and deaths of aboriginal women in that province.

Similar concentrations of missing or murdered women in Alberta and Saskatchewan were noted, too, along with the single most horrific chapter in the whole sorrowful saga: the dozens of vanished women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside linked to the predatory B.C. pig farmer Robert Pickton.

But there are tears staining village streets, rural sideroads and inner-city avenues across the country. No province or territory is beyond the scope of a tragedy that encompasses every corner of Canada and which — for all of the individual instances of anguish — is made especially plain with a single, breathtaking number: 1,573.

There are thousands of missing men in the country — more than 5,000, in fact, are listed at CPIC — but the spotlight has turned to Canada’s lost women because of the clusters of disappearances throughout the West and the sense that predatory men lurk behind the grim statistics.

Even 1,573 strikes Gladys Radek as a low estimate.

A member of the Gitksan Nation of northern B.C. who now lives in Vancouver, Radek has emerged as a leading voice for the lost. It’s an angry voice, and the word “racism” rolls easily from her tongue as she discusses the pain of her own family’s loss and the disproportionate toll among aboriginal communities like hers.

But the 59-year-old activist, now studying aboriginal law at a Vancouver native college, has called for governments, police agencies and the public to devote more attention to all of Canada’s missing women — “red, black, white and yellow,” as she puts it — with greater investigative resources to solve existing cases and strengthened social services to prevent new ones.

“It pissed me off that these women were going missing without anybody saying or doing anything about it,” says Radek, recalling her gathering awareness of the crisis in the wake of her own niece’s unexplained disappearance in September 2005 along the Highway of Tears.

Tamara Chipman — 22 at the time, and the mother of a two-year-old boy — was hitchhiking outside Prince Rupert when she vanished.

“She was just beginning her life,” says Radek. “Tamara was a beautiful, spunky girl.”

The tragedy sparked a vision. Radek imagined a cross-Canada pilgrimage linking families and communities across the country struggling to cope with missing and murdered women.

Last year, with a Vancouver-to-Ottawa trek she called Walk4Justice, Radek’s vision was realized, drawing widespread media coverage and galvanizing public awareness of Canada’s lost women.

The number 4 in the name “covers all the races, and all four directions,” says Radek. “Before we did that walk, there wasn’t really that much attention paid to the missing and murdered women. That’s when the families started coming together more and more.

“It was a pretty powerful journey.”

Earlier this year, Radek organized a second Walk4Justice between Vancouver and Prince Rupert to spotlight the suffering of families — including her own — who’ve lost loved ones along the Highway of Tears.

She isn’t convinced police in B.C. or elsewhere are doing enough to probe the hundreds of unsolved cases, or that governments are sufficiently seized by the need to invest more in vulnerable communities and demographic groups — native and non-native — to prevent numbers like 1,573 from growing larger.

“We need better services so women don’t get caught in such desperate situations,” she argues. “We’re pushing for a lot more shelters, even in the smallest communities. There’s often nowhere for women to go when they’re running from violent situations.”

RCMP Staff Sgt. Wayne Clary defends the efforts of police in B.C. and across the country in probing missing-women cases. In his experience, he says, police agencies “bend over backwards” to co-operate across jurisdictional boundaries, comparing notes and sharing clues to try to solve what are often the toughest cases in police work to crack.

But he does agree with Radek about one thing when it comes to the CPIC total of 1,573 missing women in Canada.

“I thought it would be higher,” he says.

Perhaps it’s a worldview shaped by his immersion in scores of missing-women cases — most notably the Pickton-linked disappearances of up to 60 sex-trade workers and other high-risk targets in Vancouver — during a 29-year career as one of B.C.’s leading investigators.

The province has emerged as the country’s main stage in this long-running tragedy, and Clary wonders aloud if Vancouver’s history as a key Pacific port — a magnet not just for tourists and immigrants who’ve brought prosperity to B.C., but also for criminals — has contributed to the crisis.

Resources, he notes, are not boundless when it comes to investigating missing women, or any crime for that matter. But as a key player in the high-profile and well-funded Project Evenhanded investigation that ultimately unraveled Pickton’s crimes, Clary says he sympathizes with isolated investigators across the country, who inevitably have a multitude of other open files on their desks in addition to time-consuming missing-person cases.

“If you have a crime scene and no body — no person — that’s easy. You just roll it out like it’s a homicide. It’s when you don’t have a crime scene, it’s harder. Because obviously you’re adjusting resources and files just never stop coming in,” he says.

“I’ve been on a project here, so we just deal with the one issue — which is easier to handle because there’s dedicated resources. But when you’re investigating with a detachment or a municipal PD, there’s stuff coming your way every day. And, of course, it never ends.”

The principal strategy for probing the case of a missing woman is simple enough, he says.

“You identify who their associates are, where they work, and you just start asking questions. Generally, that will lead you somewhere. But there’s many cases where you just don’t know, and where do you go next?”

Bank accounts, credit cards and cellphones are probed because they’re likely to record a person’s movements, says Clary.

“You can see them existing in society, and then all of a sudden everything stops,” he says. “Whether it’s the methadone clinic, or their doctor, or their welfare cheque — it just stops. And you have to ask yourself, why did that happen?”

In so many cases, he says, it’s what you can’t do for desperate families — the anguished ones seeking closure years or decades after a sister or daughter has vanished — that haunts him and other officers assigned to search for the missing.

Too often, he says bluntly, “you can never give it to them. It’s difficult to convey to them that there’s nothing more you can do.”

And the sad reality, he says, is that the disappeared — in many or even most of the cases on file — are dead.

But without evidence to prove that a missing woman was murdered or otherwise lost her life, families are naturally reluctant to turn the page. The word “missing,” for all of its horrifying connotations, preserves at least a shred of hope.

One weekend in September, in the remote woods near Thunder Bay, an Ontario family and a team of volunteer searchers were clinging to such hope.

They scoured the forests of Rainbow Falls Provincial Park looking for clues that might point to the whereabouts of Christina Calayca, a vivacious, 20-year-old childcare worker from Toronto who disappeared — literally “without a trace,” a police spokesperson says — after setting off for a morning jog from a campsite on Aug. 6, 2007.

Was the young Filipina-Canadian woman snatched by an unknown assailant or human trafficker? Did she intentionally vanish to create a new life and identity? Or did she simply lose her way in the trees, slip into a stream, fall from a rock ledge?

Police do not have evidence pointing to foul play, says Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Shelley Garr, but they just don’t know.

“There are a number of possibilities,” she says, “but we don’t speak to hypotheticals.”

There’s a website, www.findchristinacalayca.com, that details a 2008 fundraising gala, holds a cache of news stories, promotes a CD — “Missing You” — that’s dedicated to Calayca.

The site exudes affection for the lost woman.

“Each day since her disappearance months ago, Christina’s loved ones have hoped and prayed that she would return to us safely,” a message states. “If hope alone were enough, she would already be home; but she unfortunately is not.”

There have now been six searches — three led by the OPP, three organized by Calayca’s family, including one with sniffer dogs supplied by a benevolent search-and-rescue specialist from the U.S.

“She went missing and there’s been nothing since,” Garr said in a recent interview. “Christina’s mother was up again this past weekend. They are still actively searching for answers. But it must be frustrating for them.”

The best chance for discovery, she adds, might have been during the initial 17-day search in August 2007, a full-scale operation involving aerial crews and extensive grid-pattern sweeps by emergency personnel on the ground.

“But then we got into fall,” says Garr, “and fall turns into winter.”

source: via my email from Glendene Grant

Duration: 6:20 | Made: 19.8.09

A tribute to one of my all time favorite books. This film adaptation is ok but it barely scraches the surface of the book’s story and it’s depth. I don’t know of anyone who has been able to read that book too easily. The beginning bits that aren’t watermarked are from a featurette bonus material of the DVD.

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http://peterpanthimbles.net/?video=268

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